Unsung Lullabies #1- Self Assessment

Well, I’ve decided to join a few other bloggers in reading the book Unsung Lullabies.  The lovely dayzofrain over at Living a New Life with Infertility has taken it upon herself to set up a blog ring of people who are going to read and post about their experiences with this book.  I’m obviously new to this but I think I get it!  I’m just ready to start moving forward with healing (hopefully) instead of becoming overwhelmed with the devastation of infertility. 

So to begin, she decided that we should write a post about where we are currently and where we hope to be eventually!  I think that’s a good place to start!

Let’s see, I think I am in sort of a weird place right now.  If you would have asked me two weeks ago, I would have been in a bad place. I was emotionally dead and could not imagine suffering any more disappointments.  I had only just recently begun to really believe that I may never have a biological child.  Up until that point I just kept thinking my BFP would come eventually…just maybe not as soon as I expected it. 

After finding out the news about my sister, I was completely thrown for a loop.  How the heck do you reconcile the grief of losing a big sister and the grief of infertility?  Is it fair to feel worse about one than another?  I just would never have thought my heart could handle so much all at one time.  Obviously for that week, the pain of infertility didn’t cross my mind much.  The pain of my sister’s death was just too big.  There wasn’t any room for infertility.  But now that some time has passed, it has crept back in.  Sadly, it didn’t leave, it just took a backseat for awhile. 

The amazing thing though, is now I see the grief a little differently, I am ready to deal with it and be done with it (as much as you can be anyway).  I realized that my sister did not plan on these being her last days and I honestly don’t know when my last days are either!  So how sad would it be if I just wallowed the next few years of my life away and let myself be consumed by the sadness of infertility and then found out that those were the last years of my life.  I truly want to be happy again.  I truly want to find a way to deal with my loss.  I truly want to begin to get back to the person I used to be.  I know I will never be completely the same but it would be nice if someday people looked at me and said…”wow, look what she has done despite everything she has gone through.”

The day before my sister died I wrote one of my really good friends a long e-mail about how hard a time I was having with infertility.  She is not married yet (she recently got engaged though) and is in a completely different place in her life.  She is completely not ready to even think about kids.  I rarely opened up to her in previous years about my infertility because I felt like she couldn’t relate.  But because it had become such a weight on me I just had to tell her I couldn’t pretend anymore.  She wrote me such a beautiful e-mail back. I just had to share a portion of it here because it really hit home for me.

As for the other issues you find getting you down, please don’t hestitate to share your feelings when you need to.  I in turn will do my best to help you find the silver lining or just listen, as friends should.  I won’t pretend there’s much upside to a riddle like infertility, or aging (yikes), or work (boo), but despite these obstacles you really do have a great life (an envious one actually) and those things that aren’t quite right, you go out and do something about and that’s admirable. Adoption will be another beautiful example.  

The fact that she looked at my life and thought it was envious really surprised me.  It made me realize that all these years I have been happily married, it’s been something she has wanted too and had to wait for.  She CAN relate.  It’s just a different thing she wanted and had to wait for.   She also pointed out how often I go out and right the things that are wrong in my life.  If I can make things right in other areas of my life, why not this?  I realize I can’t fix my own infertility, but I can do other things to fix me emotionally.  Reading this book is a first step and maybe someday there will be a step that entails adoption.   I just don’t know yet and that’s ok.  

So I realized that I cannot live my life feeling sorry for myself all the time.  But in the same breath, I also cannot (and will not) hide what I am going through.  I will talk about it when I need to talk about it.  I will not ignore the bad days but I will also not let a few bad days define me either.  If I have good days, I’m going to try and enjoy every second of it.  When we go to our friends homes to meet their new babies, I am going to hold that baby as long as I want and just take it all in.  Yet I will still be open if I need to about the tiny bit of hurt that may cause me too!

I know I am not there yet and that’s why I want to take a step forward and read this book.  I’ve spent so much time basking in a pit of my own hurt and self pity and now I am ready to get out.  I know it will not be a perfect journey and I very well could take many a trip back into that pit but the fact that I’m trying, I hope, will make all the difference. 

Feel free to click around our blog ring.  We’re all going to be posting on the same general topics each week on Saturday and will each have a link at the bottom to the next post in the ring.  I hope what we find out helps more than just us.  But also any of you who are in a similar place. 

link to next person in the blog ring:  Giant Speed Bump